Salpa
LoT
Completed during the summer of 2012 while interning at LoT Architecture, Sӓlpӓ was a competition entry for the design of a new public school in Vantaa, Finland. The design won mention with the final jury awarding the design for best architectural concept, most innovative, open minded and challenging within the competition entries. As a part of small team I was directly involved with all aspects of the projects from conceptual design to visualization.
The new Aurinkokivi school is a new landmark for the city of Vantaa. It is the core of its future success and a reflection of the society’s values, tradition and progressiveness. The school is situated at the edge of the old city’s new expansion. The project is conceived to be a pavilion in nature that negotiates this transitional context. Its geometry and organization merges the new and the old, the geometric configurations of contemporary urban planning and the organic, improvisational and multifunctional volumetric
organization of traditional urbanism. Its architectural identity goes beyond the inner dynamics of the building. It is an icon, a statement, a brand logo by itself. The school is a small city within a city. An iconic, condensed form that encloses life, and endorses it. Schools nowadays are regarded as shared work spaces for both teachers and students. The interior offers peace and quiet for autonomous work and concentration as well as communal areas for joint activities and socializing.
A clear gesture of tilting the building roof defines at once the school volume in the purest way. Its orientation towards the south creates ideal orientation for maximizing the amount of incoming sunlight and at the same time is a symbolical and practical gesture that corresponds to the interior placement of the program. Large programmatic units that require volume or additional floor levels and are mainly addressed to bigger kids are accommodated under the same continuous roof together with single level units, addressed to smaller kids.
A network of bright streets open to the sky creates detached volumes, blocks for learning, sports and recreation, designated areas for specific functions and streets, parks and plazas linking them. In between daily life in the school, improvised social behaviour bring to life new uses, random meeting spots, areas for private concentration and
spontaneous moments for casual encounters. Learning is not confined exclusively to dedicated teaching spaces; teaching and other activities can also take place in the corridors-streets, in the open air patios or terraces of the upper floors, the yards the gym or the larger halls. A main circulation loop surrounds the school communal areas
and is wide enough to accommodate resting areas and act as an extension of the teaching spaces.
Project Type: Competition
Completed: 2012
Location: Vantaa, Finland
Team: Eleni Petaloti, Tuomas Raikamo, Leonidas Trampoukis, Ryan Whitby